


I Spy

by NorroenDyrd



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Accidental Voyeurism, Blindness, Emotions, Eventual Relationships, F/M, Fantasizing, Feels, Late Night Conversations, Mild Smut, Nature, Secrets, Sneaking Around, Study Group, Teacher-Student Relationship, Tsunderes, Winterhold, student life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-25 04:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12523060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: After an exhausting night of revision, the three Winterhold apprentices distract themselves by spying on their Alchemy teacher, an Altmeri guest lecturer invited over by his old friend Savos Aren. They suspect him to be secretly in league with the Thalmor - but it turns out that, even though he does have a secret, it is of an entirely different nature. This discovery leads Brelyna Maryon to change her outlook on the aloof and disagreeable Master Aedmar... In more ways than one.





	I Spy

**Author's Note:**

> You will note that Aedmar is very similar to Professor Snape in some respects. This is because it's an older story, going back to the time when I was more active in the Harry Potter fandom and under heavy influence of a friend of mine who was into Snape/Hermione. The relationship between Aedmar and Brelyna has evolved since then, and their love has mellowed his personality, but this is the story that got it all started.

They could not tell exactly what time it was, as the main source of light in the Hall of Attainment came from the mystical focal point on the lower level, round which they had all nestled with their scrolls and inkwells - and it kept emitting the same shimmering blue glow both day and night.  
  
But, huddled on the edge of the round magical well, squinting down at the ink-splattered parchment, almost without looking up, they were still able to register the sounds that came from the scholars' rooms - muffled, almost dream-like, like echoes from a distant plane of Oblivion. Voices, shuffling footsteps, the bubbling of the communal alchemy lab, the soft hiss of spells being cast... And as minutes crawled by, trickling together into hours, those ambient noises gradually, one by one, faded into silence.  
  
This had to mean that everyone had gone to sleep. That somewhere out there, where the crisp, fresh breath of eternal winter swept over the jagged shore, and where the icy, foaming waves of the Sea of Ghosts licked the glistening black cliffs, and where there were no dusty tomes and stuffy, murky corridors - out there, in the outside world, the sky had darkened, and the moons and the stars had come out.  
  
And they were still there, glued to the hard, cold, rough stone, their necks aching dully from staring down, their eyelids sliding together, their minds benumbed by the clutter of words and symbols they kept writing down... J'Zargo was doing his best to hold up, to show that he was not tired - that on the contrary, he found it immensely enjoyable to hunch his furry back over crinkled old manuscripts and to scribble down countless notes; for the ambitious catkin, it was a matter of principle. But even he was gradually cracking under pressure, his whiskers drooping down mournfully and his eyes losing their bright, keen blue glint. Brelyna and Onmund, in turn, were dangerously close to sliding down to the floor and remaining there till morning.  
  
'Onmund,' the Dunmer apprentice said hoarsely, breaking the silence that had been crushing their poor, throbbing skulls for Julianos alone knew how many hours. 'Could you spell-check my essay? I swear, I am barely able to think'.  
  
The young Nord squeezed his eyelids shut for a second or two and then tore them apart again, tossing his head from side to side as though he had water in his ears.  
  
'All right,' he replied, accepting an uneven stack of dog-eared sheets of paper from Brelyna's outstretched hand. 'I'll take a look; but I am not too good at thinking at the moment, either'.  
  
'Did this one mean, not too good at thinking - ever?' J'Zargo muttered dully - apparently, the poor, overly diligent Khajiit was so worn out that he did not even manage to liven up is words with a sting of sarcasm.  
  
Resting his cheek in his cupped hand, Onmund skimmed over a few pages of Brelyna's miniscule handwriting - and then started and jerked awake. His wandering attention had suddenly been caught by a very curious turn of phrase, a couple of lines from the top of the page,  
  
 _When speaking of the importance of alchemy in classical literature, it is also worthwhile to mention De Rerum Dirennis, a book which, without a doubt I HATE THAT ONE-EYED N'WAH SO MUCH, I SWEAR IF HE FALLS OFF THE BRIDGE ONE DAY AND DROWNS IN THE SEA OF GHOSTS, I WILL BE THE FIRST TO CHEER_  
  
'Erm, Brelyna,' Onmund gestured to the Dunmer to shift closer, pointing at the rogue paragraph in her essay. 'I don't think that's what Master Aedmar would want to read'.  
  
The Dunmer snatched the parchment out of his hands and groaned faintly, two dark-purple spots blooming on her high, angular cheekbones. J'Zargo peered over her shoulder and thrashed his fluffy tail abruptly against the side of the well.  
  
'Friend Brelyna may not have chosen the smartest way to express her thoughts,' he hissed. 'But J'Zargo has to agree. He would stand on the bridge and watch Master Aedmar struggle with the waves, and hope that at that moment, Master Aedmar would be regretting all those detentions he had unjustly given such a brilliant student as J'Zargo... Or perhaps,' his eyes lit up, his slit-like pupils narrowing to black threads, 'Perhaps sly J'Zargo could offer Master Aedmar one of his special Flame Cloak scrolls...'  
  
Onmund slanted his eyes at the Khajiit, knitting his eyebrows. Though still a bit startled by this little revelation of Brelyna's, and discomforted by J'Zargo's scheming, he agreed as well - it was hard not to.  
  
Master Aedmar had been invited to the College by Arch-Mage Aren, who was rumoured to be a good friend of his - thought it was very, very hard to imagine that this unbearably arrogant, self-centered High Elf could be friends with anyone. He had assumed the post of Alchemy master, since the sorcerers of Winterhold offered no training in that school. At first,  he was supposed to teach them only for a month - but he lingered on, as some sort of 'business', whatever it was (something morbid, no doubt) detained him in Skyrim. The apprentices also had another explanation for his extended stay - that he found sadistic enjoyment in making their lives miserable, and simply could not deprive himself of this little treat.   
  
Sometimes, he would disappear for a few days, and, baiting their breath, they prayed that he would never return - but he always did. And lashed out at them with a renewed force. Setting the most impossible, master-level assignments with such breakneck deadlines that within the allotted time, the three students barely managed to finish making the lists of ingredients of the potion they were supposed to brew. Deriding them for each smallest mistake, never exhausting his vocabulary supply; 'incompetent imbeciles', 'inferior creatures', 'brainless wretches', 'worthless buffoons' and 'pathetic excuses for mages' were but a few of his words of choice. And when they did succeed, despite all odds - brushing off the results of their experiments as 'achieved purely by chance'. And always, always finding some reason or other to punish them. To detain them after class was over, or give them extra homework - just as he had done this time, making them write an essay (or a bloody thesis, more like it!) on the role of alchemy in history and literature. All of this just because Onmund had come five minutes late for class (he kept paying visits to Enthir during recesses, trying to persuade that sleazy Bosmer to give back his amulet), and Brelyna had stood up for him, and J'Zargo had simply hovered in the background.  
  
With a small groan of frustration, Brelyna crumpled up the page she had ruined with her emotional outburst, and set down to writing again.  
  
'That was awkward,' she said, without looking up. 'But - but now that I think about it, I feel that I shouldn't be ashamed. That Altmer is the worst thing that has ever happened to us. And to think,' she smiled bitterly, 'To think that once we were scared of Ancano...'  
  
Onmund rubbed his nose bridge thoughtfully.  
  
'Speaking of Ancano - I've always suspected the two are in league with each other. Spying for the Thalmor and whatnot'.  
  
The other two apprentices stiffened, their dizzy minds processing what the young Nord had just said. And the more his words sank in, the more sense they made.  
  
They still remembered how Ancano had first run into Master Aedmar - during their class in the Hall of the Elements, where the Thalmor agent had supposedly come in search for the Arch-Mage. How meaningfully they had looked at one another; honestly, the electric crackle of the air between those two pairs of piercing, cold eyes - Ancano's vivid amber and Master Aedmar's venomous green and blank, milky white - had been so intense, so tangible, that J'Zargo's fur and whiskers had stood on end. How they had pronounced each other's names, putting deliberate effort into the movements of their lips to give perfect shape to every single sound.   
  
They had not said anything else during their first meeting - but this had been enough to make the apprentices suspect that the two Altmer had to go way, way back. And how could one go way, way back with someone like Ancano? By being either his enemy - say, one of those poor, hapless dissidents that kept running away from Alinor - or his colleague.   
  
Now, the snooty alchemist did not give off the impression of someone that could have been hunted down by the Aldmeri Dominion - on the contrary, he seemed perfect Thalmor material. To use the tongue of Master Aedmar's trade, his tall, lean self was like a phial filled to the brim with a good mixture of vanity, arrogance and disdain towards most of the world. A potion - or poison, rather - of the highest purity, not dimmed by the tiniest droplet of what one smart book had called 'the milk of human (or meric, in this case) kindness'.  
  
And if that wasn't enough - the apprentices could have sworn that they had often heard Master Aedmar, whose quarters were in the same hall as theirs, walking along the empty corridors late at night. What if he and Ancano were secretly plotting something behind the Arch-Mage's back? Feeding the College's arcane knowledge to other evil High Elves in gilded robes? What if - the apprentices' minds whispered wildly to them, feverish with weariness - Aedmar had tricked Master Aren into believing that he was his friend, while he real plan was to do something foul to him, and - and...  
  
After a few minutes of intense pondering, J'Zargo set down his scroll and quill resolutely.  
  
'J'Zargo has had enough studies for tonight,' he said, getting up. 'J'Zargo thinks that we should check on Ancano and Master Aedmar to see if they have gone on a secret meeting. If they have, J'Zargo says we report them to Arch-Mage Aren and,' he showed the tip of his small pink tongue, 'And be appropriately rewarded'.  
  
The other two followed suit. Granted sneaking around the College in search of Thalmor conspirators was definitely not the best way to spend the rest of the night - but they had reached the stage of weariness when the persistent hum inside the burning, overstrained mind makes it very hard to go to sleep; before they knew it, their feverish restlessness swept them off their roost on the well's edge and carried them in J'Zargo's wake, through corridor after silent corridor, past the supply cupboards and the sheltered alcoves where the scholars slept, muttering extracts from their research under their breath...  
  
The proud Thalmor agent resided in a tiny nook, with scant furnishings that were even more modest than those of the apprentices; this had to be Arch-Mage Aren's subtle way to show Ancano that he was not welcome in Winterhold. These - for lack of a better word - quarters turned out to be empty; and so did Master Aedmar's room.   
  
The three apprentices had only taken a peek inside the evil alchemist's sanctum sanctorum once, when he was just settling in, with Mistress Mirabelle whizzing back and forth around him, fussing like a startled hen. Back then, the room had been little more than three bare walls and an arched doorway; but now Master Aedmar had had plenty of time to settle in. And settle in he had. The three apprentices hovered for a long while on the threshold of their arch-enemy's lair, craning their necks to make out what was inside, shifting from one foot to the other and shuddering slightly - and even though it was pretty evident that the bed was empty and had not been slept in, J'Zargo kept casting a muffling spell on himself and his companions, over and over again, as though afraid that they might be discovered. Master Aedmar's preferences in interior design certainly were more than a bit unnerving.   
  
Toppling stacks of dusty tomes, piled up on the floor, so close together that crossing the room would have been barely easier than braving an ancient Nordic ruin, packed full of traps, and rising almost towards the ceiling, like the bars of a cage. Some of the volumes, serving as bases of the lopsided book pillars, were so thick that the apprentices could almost bet that they would be impossible to lift without magic; and many bore the symbol of the Destruction school on their spines - well, it was certainly not surprising that that elf liked reading about things blowing up... maybe about burning people alive or shredding their skin with sharp shards of magical ice.  
  
Maps, plastered all over the walls so that there was barely a blank space left. Most of them showed Skyrim as a whole, or close-ups of separate regions - and on every single sheet of tattered parchment, the red markings left by the cartographer were mixed in with arrows and crosses and notes added in red, in Master Aedmar's sprawling, barely intelligible handwriting; from a distance, it seemed as though the maps were bleeding. And plastered carelessly in between the maps, there were drawings... Gruesome, disturbing drawings, showing men and mer stripping off their skin to expose their tissues and letting the intestines fall out of the pit of their stomach; with squiggly lines  pointing at each of their joints and loosely hanging organs and linking them with smaller pictures, of alchemy ingredients and swirling orbs of fire, ice and shock... apparently to show which parts of the body were affected by this or that herbal root, or mushroom, or rune, or spell.  
  
And finally - shelves upon shelves of glass jars. Some with frenzied, fluttering insects, thrashing relentlessly against the transparent walls of their prisons. And others with lifeless, floating objects, suspended in some kind of slurping, slimy, greenish solvent: severed toes of a giant, with thick, yellowish, fraying nails; flat, elongated pale-grey ears of some elf-like creature; a bloodshot eye of a sabre cat with a milky spot over the pupil like a circle of fat in a meaty broth; and what looked painfully like a heart (Brelyna prayed to the gods that it was the heart of a daedra - at any rate, it seemed far too big to be human or meric), with a twisted cluster of crimson tendrils trailing after it, as though it was some sort of monstrous jellyfish - and, oh dear sweet Azura, still beating!  
  
'Well...' Onmund said at long last, forcing himself to tear his gaze away from the blank, dead sabre cat eye. 'Neither of the elves are in their quarters...'  
  
'Just as this one suspected,' J'Zargo hissed, whipping the floor tiles with his tail. 'Come on. Let us seek them out. Let us uncover their evil plot!.. Whatever it is'.  
  
Together, the three apprentices stepped outside, into the snowy pre-dawn murk, their feet wrapped into the faint glow of J'Zargo's muffling spell. The courtyard seemed empty, with no scheming Thalmor in sight. After blundering about a little, blinking and sniffing when the large, fluffy snowflakes plastered themselves against their faces, the sleepy sleuths slid into the Hall of Countenance.  
  
They had no idea where to search for the two mer, or how to go about confronting them if they did find them - but they were too tired to care. They had just barely enough strength left to keep pressing forward, peering into every dark corner with their aching, bleary eyes, plagued by visions of robed figures standing in the shadows with their heads close together, whispering...  
  
'Ancano...'  
  
J'Zargo blinked and pricked up his ears, some of his weariness ebbing away, and glanced around the Hall's second level, where the search had led them.   
  
'Did you hear that?' he asked, lowering himself into a sneaky crouching pose.  
  
Onmund opened his mouth to reply - but before he could, the sound rustled through the Hall once again. A husky, groan-like whisper - that was nothing like Master Aedmar's voice. In fact - it sounded very much like a woman.  
  
'Yes... Yes, Ancano...'  
  
Brelyna whirled around wildly - and then froze in a very dramatic pose, eyes bulging, one hand clapped against her mouth, another pointing emphatically at the nearby storage area.  
  
There he was - Ancano, leaning heavily against an old, broken-down Arcane Enchanter that Master Sergius was supposed to be repairing; he had torn one arm out of his sleeve, and his exposed golden skin seemed to gleam faintly in the darkness. And lying down on that hapless apparatus, her robe pulled down to her waist, her bosom heaving like the Sea of Ghosts during a storm, her legs twisting round Ancano's hips like a pair of sleek golden snakes - was Mistress Nirya, the Altmer sorceress who had a bitter feud going on with Faralda, the Destruction teacher.  
  
'Oh, Ancano,' she moaned, helping the Thalmor extricate himself out of his second sleeve - while he was little short of tearing her apart with his greedy mouth, moving his lips from her neck to the space between her collar bones, and down to - to her...  
  
Onmund let out a small, piteous sound, something between a squeak, a sob and a retching spasm. Brelyna arched her eyebrows sympathetically and moved over in front of the Nord to block out the steamy scene; they had never discussed it openly, but she suspected that the poor boy had not yet been with a woman.  
  
J'Zargo cast one last, lingering look at the two intertwined Altmer, and turned away with a snort, his cheeks rounding up to two sulking fur balls.  
  
'J'Zargo's brilliant plan failed,' he said bitterly, his voice barely audible over Nirya's groans. 'There is no evil plot to uncover, and there is no reward to receive. Just two stupid elves playing cats in the springtime. J'Zargo is tired and cannot think straight. J'Zargo will head back to bed now. Try to sleep'.  
  
'Yeah, m-m-me too,' Onmund stammered, shrinking his head uncomfortably into his shoulders as Nirya's voice was joined by Ancano's.'N-nothing more to do here'.  
  
And then, he added under his breath,   
  
'This is going to give me nightmares'.  
  
The two male apprentices trudged off, shoulders slouching. In the morning, they would perhaps realize the full scope of their little discovery; they would ponder over the secret night life of the impenetrably icy Thalmor agent; they would hide their eyes and cough into their sleeves whenever the elf would pass them by - but not now. Now, their search had hit a dead end, and the meagre remnants of feverish energy that had kept them going were seeping through the cracks like water pouring out of a broken vessel.  
  
Brelyna, however, remained behind. The boys were such fools to abandon the search so soon, she thought to herself. Sure, J'Zargo's little theory had been proved wrong - but this did not mean that Aedmar was not up to something sinister. He was out of bed, wasn't he? And he had given them homework for the next day, so he was not planning to leave the College like he did at times. That meant... he had to be snooping around, being an evil n'wah! And as long as she was out and about, and more or less alert - why not try to track him down?   
  
Leaving behind Nirya and Ancano, who would likely finish off the poor arcane enchanter long before dawn, Brelyna headed up the winding stone staircase to one of the places they had not checked yet. The roof.  
  
  
***  
  
  
This really had to stop. It was ridiculous, improper - coming every night to the roof of the College and fawning over the Winterhold landscape that spread far and wide down below. It was a bad sign. A symptom of him going soft.   
  
Just like those lasting pangs of icy pain that pierced his heart whenever he looked at the three nincompoops studying magic at the College - because they, in particular that perfectionist of a Khajiit and open-hearted, eager young Nord, reminded him of those youngsters that had managed to lead him out of the darkness and to sneak their way into his heart a long, long time ago. His friends. Recent College graduates, foolhardy, naive, but so very eager, that had perished on some botched research expedition... Savos never did tell him of the circumstances.  
  
Well, he had managed to conquer that little weakness, hadn't he? When teaching those three pseudo-mages, he always made a point of being especially strict, especially uncompromising. No lenience. No special treatment. No encouragement, no sympathy. And it seemed to be working - the apprentices hated him with all the fury that their little hearts were able to contain, so he was in no danger of forming a friendship with them... The old painful memories were fading away, and the cracks in the hard, protective shell over his heart were steadily healing.  
  
Could he not do the same thing about these little nocturnal excursions? Could he not force himself to remain indoors, reading a book or experimenting with a new potion, instead of dancing off into the night like a boy, an orb of magelight hovering over his shoulder?  
  
But... but the sky was so beautiful, with the blurry veil of snow gradually growing thinner and the bright, crisp colours coming out - deep, rich aquamarine, fading into gentle, forget-me-not blue at the horizon... And the enormous blocks of smooth, shimmering ice floated so majestically on the inky waves, like a fleet of war ships headed for some unknown harbour... And the frozen shores loomed through the darkness in such a breathtakingly ghost-like way, cloaked in a see-through mantle of billowing snow, swept off the cliffs by the wind... And the sea itself heaved and breathed, rising and falling rhythmically like the chest of a giant of a warrior clad in a mail of purest ebony...  
  
He just - he just couldn't stop himself. He couldn't keep from going up on the roof every night - and looking out at the sea. And seeing. Seeing.  
  
By Auri-El, it felt so heavenly, to be able to see! Even after a hundred years, he still could not get used to it - gorging himself on the feast of colours that opened up before him at every turn. Everything around him had millions of different shades, with black never being truly black and white never being truly white - and all this treasure trove of colours merged, moulded together to paint wondrous pictures. Pictures that filled his heart with an unforgivable, inappropriate warmth - warmth that did not befit a mer like himself... That he had to exterminate, to expunge from his soul - somehow. And that he failed to chase away.  
  
Before Savos and his friends had found a way to completely restore the sight in his left eye, he had been blind for almost six decades. Sixty years of living in an empty, pitch-black world. Sixty years of using his hands, a cane, and a few nigh on useless spells, to perceive the world. Sixty years of holding on to faded, pathetic memories of what the sun looked like, and of how the dappled shadows of a tree crown danced on the grass, and of the way the reflections of a person's thoughts danced inside their eyes. Sixty years - a lapse of time that was nothing, a mere fleeting moment, for any Altmer, but for him, crawled by at an excruciating, snail-like pace. Sixty years that left a burning brand inside his heart and that turned every day, now that he had been healed, into a unique, exciting discovery.  
  
There were inconveniences, of course. His other eye still remained shrouded in thick milky murk, which, at first, had made it difficult for him to move around. With time, however, he adjusted himself to his new world, not without the aid of keen sound perception, developed over the years of blindness - but the wild joy of being able to see never went away, remaining just as strong as on that distant day, a hundred years ago, when the black pall first fell back, and the colours came flooding in.  
  
The two moons, once two enormous glowing disks, were now reduced to soft round strokes of white paint, mixed in with a generous amount of water - and the narrow strip of the skyline burned like a metal bar heated in a blacksmith's forge. The sun was about to rise.  
  
His lips twitched slightly, forming what, by his standards, qualified as a broad, happy grin. Of all the new wonders that were revealed to him with the return of his eyesight, this had to be the most glorious one. As the dazzling golden glow flooded the wakening sky, and a gust of fresh nipping wind swept from the sea like a blissful sigh, he felt sweet, poignant pain swell up within his heart, as though it was a lute with strings stretched too tightly - so tightly that one of them finally snapped in two, and the vision in his sighted eye was obscured by stinging, salty droplets...  
  
  
***  
  
  
The first thing Brelyna did after climbing up to the roof was to scoop up a handful of wet, scorchingly cold snow from the slippery, frost-bitten stone, and to rub it into her face to chase off some of that wretched drowsiness. When she straightened up, her hand resting on her poor, tired back, her lips slided apart in a triumphant smile. She had spotted Master Aedmar, standing on the edge of the roof as a silent sentinel, his long silvery hair billowing in the wind. No doubt, brewing some devious scheme in the dark recesses of his twisted, evil mind.  
  
J'Zargo's spell had already worn off, and Brelyna herself knew no magic of that kind - but she still decided to creep up to the Altmer and take a closer look at him. He had his blind eye turned towards her, and the whistling of the wind would drown out the sound of her footsteps; it could be a while before he became aware of her presence. She just had to take it nice and slow...  
  
Clawing at her robes to keep her heart from leaping out, frog-like, onto the snow, Brelyna squatted down and began moving forward, putting colossal effort into placing one foot in front of the other - and not only because she did not want to be discovered. The wind kept strengthening; it slashed at Brelyna like an invisible whip, twisting round her body in icy coils that penetrated through her thin, fluttering robe and made her limbs go numb - and pulled her persistently off her track, turning every next step into a struggle. To make it worse, the stone beneath her feet had crusted over with an uneven, slippery layer of ice, slightly powdered with snow; the soles of her soft cloth boots kept skidding, and she had to flap her arms in the air, bird-like, to keep her balance.  
  
Finally, there came a moment when the force of the wind became too much for Brelyna to handle; losing her footing, she tumbled down to the ground, letting out a frightened yelp as burning pain suddenly sank its claws into her right ankle.  
  
Master Aedmar started and turned to face the intruder. She watched him through a film of tears - a vague shape drawing towards her, taking its time to trace a path across the ice... but still, looming ever closer, closer... Had she interrupted him in the middle of something nefarious? What would he do to - to punish her? Would anyone hear her if she screamed for help?  
  
Shaking all over, she attempted to get to her feet - but her injured leg twisted awkwardly beneath her, and back she thudded to the ice, whimpering with pain and helpless anger. Then, seeing that she could not run, she narrowed her eyes to two blazing ruby slits and lifted her hands, cupping her fingers round the pulsing purple orbs of a shock spell.  
  
'I - I am not afraid of you!' she blurted out.  
  
The Altmer stopped in his tracks, inches away from Brelyna, and peered down intently, cocking his head to one side to see her better with his good eye. This made him look a bit like a bird - a Felsaad tern, of the kind that circled round the Bulwark back on Solstheim. His white hair, ruffled by the wind and rippling over the shoulders of his dark fur cloak, resembled bristling feathers, and his thin, curved nose, which seemed especially sharp against his gaunt face, jutted out like a beak. Even his voice, when he spoke to her over the wailing of the wind, sounded loud and shrill like the hungry screech of a scavenger swooping down on a fishing boat in search of food. And that would make Brelyna, sprawled as she was on the icy stone - that would make her a tiny fish, tossed on the deck and thrashing its tail helplessly against the damp wood.  
  
'Don't be stupid, girl!' Master Aedmar cawed. 'I wish to offer you a deal! I don't expect a worthless apprentice like you to know a spell to treat your injury - so how about I will heal your foot, and you, in turn, will forget that you saw me here, and never, ever mention it to anyone?'  
  
Brelyna bit her lips. She knew it. She knew it! There was some vile villainous plot involved, after all!  
  
'Well, girl?' Master Aedmar persisted, his voice rising in pitch even more. 'Make up your mind! Either you swear that you will keep this meeting of ours a secret, or I leave you to freeze!'  
  
She took a deep breath and shook her head resolutely.   
  
'No,' she breathed wheezily, letting all her suppressed resentment pour into her voice. 'No. I am not about to become an accomplice in your conspiracy!'  
  
He raised the eyebrow over his sighted eye, looking mildly surprised - amused, even.  
  
'Conspiracy?' he echoed slowly. 'Just who, or what, pray tell, am I conspiring against?'  
  
Brelyna gulped as his sighted eye seemed to peel the skin off her face.  
  
'I... I don't know,' she squeaked helplessly, feeling very stupid. 'At first, we thought you were in league with Ancano, but...'  
  
'Him? Oh no,' Master Aedmar's lips curled into a sneer. 'We do have common ties in the Thalmor, I won't deny it... But I am not - how did you put it? - in league with him. Trust a bunch of brainless children like you three to come up with such a ludicrous story. No...'   
  
He lowered himself slowly at her side, his eye never leaving her face. And as she looked at him closer, she noticed that his eyelids had turned into red, puffed-up folds, and that there was a barely visible gleaming trail crossing his cheek. Had Master Aedmar, the cruel, unforgiving, ferocious Master Aedmar, been crying?  
  
In the meanwhile, he went on speaking - and she could have sworn there was no trace of the usual venom in his voice. Well, for the most part.  
  
'No... I come up her for a very personal reason. A reason that none of you blundering fools would ever be able to understand. And I desire my... excursions to remain a secret. So, for the last time. Your silence in exchange for a healing spell - do you agree or not?'  
  
She pushed herself closer towards him, gasping for breath at a renewed surge of shattering pain in her ankle. Yes, those definitely were traces of tears on his face. And tears meant that - that he was actually a... a person. That there was more to him than she, or Onmund and Jzargo, or perhaps even Arch-Mage Aren, had suspected. That deep inside that insult-spewing, homework-giving machine, there was a beating heart. That maybe - just maybe - their wild, childish hatred, their paranoid distrust of the alchemy master, had been misplaced.  
  
'All right,' she said. 'It's a deal. I will keep your secret if you heal me'.  
  
There was a faint, tick-like movement somewhere in the corner of his mouth - a shadow of a shadow of a smile.  
  
'...Thank you,' he said after a small pause.  
  
  
***  
  
  
He pulled off her boot slowly, gently almost, not to disturb the injured foot - and, cupping one hand round the smooth grey flesh, lit up a Restoration spell in the other. Even through his glove, he could feel the hot pulsing of her blood. And this was - most discomforting.   
  
All this time, he had been forcing himself to despise the Maryon girl. After all, he had every reason to - not only she was a Dunmer, one of the lesser meric races, but she was quite a mediocre mage, not living up to the fame of her Great House. But - but there were times when he caught himself gazing at her when she was poring over a spell tome, brushing a loose strand of hair out of her eyes; when his heart gave a jolt as her heard her footsteps down the corridor; when the sound of her soft, gentle voice caught him off-guard and he almost - almost - forgot about his task of fighting with his own softness.  
  
She - she was another reason why he tried so hard to distance himself from the apprentices. The feeling that stirred within him whenever he heard her as much as breathe - and after decades of relying solely on his hearing, he could tell apart the people he met by the sound of their breath - it was not unlike the pang of elation that pierced his heart when he watched the sunrise. Not as strong, though - and he could not allow it to grow strong. He was letting his weaknesses rule over him too much already.  
  
The honeyed caress of the healing spell soon made the swelling go away, and he hurried to stuff Brelyna's foot awkwardly inside her boot. Grunting slightly with the strain, she tried to get up - and then, before his mind could register what he was doing, he stretched out his hand to help her pull herself to her feet. As she leaned against him, their proximity taking his breath away, she suddenly looked up, eyes rounded in sincere surprise, and said,  
  
'You feel... warm'.  
  
'It's because you had it in your bird brain to go after me wearing nothing but a robe!' he snapped. 'Now, stop clinging on to me; you can walk fine by yourself!'  
  
  
***  
  
  
He saw her off to the very threshold of her quarters - and before they parted their ways, he had her repeat her solemn promise not to tell anyone what had happened on the roof. She reassured him mechanically, not really focusing on what he was saying. It had just occurred to her that, if you looked past his green-and-white glare, Master Aedmar was actually... kind of handsome. He had this thin, finely cut face, with high cheekbones, and a tall, sloping forehead, and, of course, the trademark meric hooked nose; she had a very vague idea how old he was, as the High Elves aged even slower than her own kin - but no matter how many centuries he had seen roll by, the lines that they left in their wake did not make him look shrivelled... They were like - like a few finishing touches without which his portrait would have been incomplete.  
  
She dwelled on all of this as she, at long last, nestled in her bed. Thankfully, all classes the following day were supposed to start after lunch - so she still had a chance to catch a couple of hours of sweet, sweet sleep. Venturing out into fresh air certainly helped, and soon she sank into the soft embrace of Oblivion. In the dream realm, for some reason or other, the memory of Ancano and Nirya resurfaced inside her mind. Only Ancano had longer hair and thinner lips, and only one eye... And Nirya's legs were the colour of ash.


End file.
